Bee Yard

I am starting the 2nd year with 6 hives. 3 double deep and 3 with IL super over 1 deep. I have 2 more to come within the week. They will not be as strong to start as they will be coming from standing trees with out their brood.

All the empty bee gum logs have been loaded on the flat bed trailer for removal from the yard area. The hive on the left is from the removal at Chatham, VA 2 days earlier. The bees are feeding on the extra comb taken from the closet.

Moving Day For Bees

The bucket with extra comb containing capped pollen was place in front of the entrance of the hive.

The vacuum line was attached to the ladder to capture those flying in while the clean up process began in the house.

The emptying of the 2 area sent the bees to the windows where they were vacuumed into a special catch box, and reunited with the rest of the colony later in the afternoon at our bee yard.

Both areas were emptied of bees.

A second cut was made to the left of the comb area as it was serving as the entrance foyer for the colony. You are looking at a 10 foot ceiling. A rolling scaffold was used.

A small cut in the ceiling exposes the colony. The comb extended a foot further inward than the top edge of the stained crown molding.

On Saturday March 20th just outside Brookneal, VA in the small community of Sugar Hill the task was to remove bees from this unoccupied house. The bees were entering the structure just under the vertical boards above the rock wall.

Moving Day For Bees

There was not much capped honey. The queen had started her spring work of laying eggs. There was capped pollen, and open cells with ferminting honey. I did see larva as some of the brood comb was removed.

It is hard to take a detailed photo in a closet.

The colony was in the closet, in left side of the wall opposite of the entrance.

I was in Chatham, VA on March Friday, 19th to remove a colony of bees that were in an interior of this lake house. I am told that a colony had been present here for 30 years.

Moving Day For Bees

This is how the brood quarters began, but I have now moved the IL. super up and added a 2nd deep super for brood.

The box is filling.

Waitng and moving.

Started smoking the bees towards the brood box from the far end of the matching splt log.

The log is laying end to end at a slight angle. The pic shows bees from one end of the log all the way to the end of the matching half.

One side of the log cent with the comb removed and covered with bees.

Looking for the queen.

A closer look.

Starting the removal.

A look at the log before removal begins.

A look at the early spring work of the queen.

This is the view of the comb from the top of the maple log.

I am using the power saw along the crack / split from the wedge.

On Thursday, March 19th, it was moving day for the maple log colony. Splitting the twisted maple log was still hard even though it had split some from drying.

Moving Day For Bees

I took the pics mid-day today, Sat the 13TH. I added a hang-over top to keep the rain away from the entrance as I have the brood box tilted to the back to prevent the loose honey from running to the front and clogging up the entrance. Later in the afternoon I noticed bees with pollen in their sacs trying to squeeze through the front screen. With this news, my mentor advised me to go ahead and remove the screen because the queen had put the crew to work in the new quarters. The bees have already cleaned up the opened log.

Moving Day For Bees

After shooting this pic, I lifted the lid and slid it forward a bit to allow the bees in on top of the liner. They all found their way to the queen. Today the 12Th, I added a super in between rain showers to give them more room. The amount of bees here was like two 3 lb boxes. I will get an update photo when the weather clears. The big maple log is next.

This log was not a section of a tree trunk, but a limb that was 20 feet up. The comb was attached along the under side in the section on the ground. That is where we found the queen walking. I allowed her to walk onto my gloved hand, and I put her in the brood box over the sections of comb where her spring work had begun. There was still a good amount of capped honey that was harvested after placing 6 frames of comb in the brood box. 2 frames of foundation was put in on each side.

Carefully we split a little, then cut a little, then split a little more until we could open the log with our on force which gave us control of the piece going down to the ground.

This log was brought to the yard on July 17, 2009. The bees were allowed to inter only through the brood box that was on the top. March 11, 2010 was moving day. After removing the brood box, we used a small power saw to cut a grove where the grain suited better for splitting.

Spring Inspections

On March the 5Th the afternoon was 60 degrees, and nighttime temps were not dropping to a sub level, so we opted to open the log to verify what I had already known. This late arriving rescue log had NO chance. The bees had not made enough honey to get them through the winter. The comb was removed and stored for later use.

The short bee gum log has not shown any sign that the bees survived the last blast of winter. I had seen they feeding on the warm days before the last storm.

The 2 colonies in the hive boxes survived the winter.